Anti-nuclear protest to greet French president Macron, to visit India on March 11, at Ratnagiri Mahashtra

By Our Representative
French president Emmanuel Macron should not be imposing the "untested, expensive and technically troubled" French EPR reactor on India, say two international groups, India-based DiaNuke and US-based Beyond Nuclear, campaigning against nuclear power in India and across the world. The French-supported Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India has been proposed at Madban village of Ratnagiri district in Maharashtra.The two well-known non-profit organizations' statement comes amidst plans to hold a massive protest, with the participation of 5,000 people of the villages surrounding the Jaitapur site, on the eve of Macron’s visit on March 11. The Jaitapur EPR project would be the biggest nuclear power plant site in the world if built, producing 9,900 MW of electricity.
Macron's visit to India, ironically, coincides with seven years to the day since the start of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in Japan, the second worst nuclear catastrophe after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion in Ukraine. France and India are expected to sign a framework agreement during the visit that would fast track a six-reactor EPR project at Jaitapur on India’s west coast.
Calling for foreign corporations not to proceed with nuclear power projects in India, they said, "In addition to the French Jaitapur site, a subsidiary of the Russian nuclear company, Rosatom, has a six reactor nuclear project in Kudankulam where two of its VVER-1000 reactors are already operational. The bankrupt US company, Westinghouse, hopes to build six AP1000 reactors in the village of Kovvada in Andhra Pradesh."

A Greenpeace protest in Toulouse, France

All these sites have seen massive protests by farmers, fishermen and villagers, whose lives and livelihoods, along with scarce water supplies, are threatened.
“The French have no right to inflict the risks and environmental devastation of nuclear power on unwilling communities in India,” said Kumar Sundaram, director of DiaNuke. “The French nuclear sector is preying upon India’s apparent eagerness to buy nuclear plants in order to restore their global reputation, fatally damaged by the failures of their EPR nuclear projects at home and in Finland.”
“It's ironic that while Macron is selling nuclear power to India where villagers have been shot protesting it, his government is at the same time tear-gasing nuclear opponents at home," said Linda Pentz Gunter, international specialist at Beyond Nuclear. “This shows yet again why nuclear energy and democracy are fundamentally incompatible."
Macron will also visit the New Delhi Solar Summit during his stopover in India. "India is ideally suited to the distributed electricity generation provided by solar and wind energy, given its vast geography and the fact that almost 70% of its population lives in rural areas,” Pentz Gunter said. "But it is clear that nuclear energy is Macron's priority agenda."
"The Areva (now Orana)-designed and EDF-constructed EPR was supposed to become the French nuclear flagship. Instead, the EPR is mired in controversy. The French Flamanville EPR, as well as one in Olkiluoto, Finland, are massively over budget, years behind schedule, and have been plagued by technical mistakes and charges of fraud and cover-ups", then statement alleged.
Orano is a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power and renewable energy headquartered in Paris La Défense, while EDF Energy UK-based producer electricity.
"Only last week, EDF admitted to substandard weldings at the Flamanville plant which also has a controversial and flawed reactor vessel lid manufactured by the Areva-owned French forge at Le Creusot which was found to have supplied defective parts and falsified quality control documents, eroding trust internationally in the EPR", it pointed out.
"Even in China, where safety controls are given less scrutiny than in Europe, further delays were just announced at the Taishan EPR site, due to cracks found in a reactor component. It marked the third delay in two years. These troubles have left Areva and EDF, both state-owned companies, fundamentally bankrupt", the statement added.

Comments

TRENDING

By Our RepresentativeIn a major embarrassment to the Government of India, the World Bank has reportedly clarified that it has not ranked India 26th out of 130 countries for providing power to its population. The top international banker’s clarification comes following Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal’s claim that India has “improved to 26 position from 99” in access to electricity in just one year.

By Dr Vinay Kate*
With every passing day more questions are being raised about the surgical strike India did in Balakot as a response to Pulwama attacks. So far the Indian media has claimed mass casulaty of 300+ terrorists of Jaish-e-Mohammad in this surgical strike, but there is hardly any report from foreign media about the same.

Counterview Desk
As Lok Sabha polls approach, there is considerable ferment in one section of the population -- India's Adivasis, forming about 8.6 per cent of India's population. Things became particularly critical following the February 14, 2019 Supreme Court order, allegedly seeking to evict lakhs of tribals from their forest lands.

Counterview Desk
In a sharp critique of the Modi government, the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A), one of world renowned economist Prof Kaushik Basu, who is Professor of Economics and Carl Marks Professor of International Studies at Cornell University, has told students at the IIM-A’s 54th Annual Convocation on March 16, 2019 that they have a “special responsibility” on their shoulders, “the responsibility to reject narrow sectarianism, uphold scientific thinking, openness to new ideas, and freedom of speech.”

By Rajiv Shah
In a major embarrassment for Gujarat model, of the 21 samples taken by officials of the state government's environmental watchdog Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) in two villages of Vadodara district and analyzed by its laboratory in Gandhinagar, the state capital, to find out pollution level in groundwater, 16 were assessed as highly contaminated – these were, in fact, found to be discharging reddish, brownish, reddish, or yellowish water.

Counterview Desk
The chapter “Freedom of Movement” of the US State Department’s “India 2018 Human Rights Report”, released recently, has criticized BJP chief Amit Shah for terming alleged Bangladeshis who may be in Assam as “termites”, because their names were struck down from the list of National Register of Citizens, under preparation in the state.
Pointing out that four million residents were excluded from Assam’s final draft list, leading to “uncertainty over the status of these individuals, many of whose families had lived in the state for several generations”, the report regrets, the Indian law does not even contain the term “refugee,” treating refugees like Rohingiyas as “any other foreigners.”
“Undocumented physical presence in the country is a criminal offense. Persons without documentation were vulnerable to forced returns and abuse”, the report says. Text of the Freedom of Movement chapter:
The law provides for freedom of internal movement, foreign travel, emigration, a…

By Rajiv Shah
Even as the Congress plans its first working committee meet in Gujarat on February 28 after an almost 58 year gap, there is reason to wonder what is in store for India’s grand old party in a state which has been long been a BJP bastion – in fact ever since mid-1990s. Ahead of the then assembly polls in late 2012, talking with me, a senior Gujarat Congress leader, currently Rajya Sabha MP, frankly said he saw no reason why Congress would win.

By VS Roy David, JP Raju*
For millions of Adivasis and other traditional forest dwellers February 13, 2019 will go down in history as the day of apocalypse. This is like the proverbial Black Friday where millions of most marginalized people of India were ordered by malicious anti-people draconian Supreme Court order depriving them the life and livelihood by evicting them from their habitats.

By Moin Qazi*
India has grown into a global powerhouse. Its economy is soaring but the picture on the ground is still quite arid. The green shoots that you see are only a patch of its landscape. Most Indians are hapless victims of inequity. India is one country where intense poverty abounds in the shadow of immense wealth.

Counterview DeskThe International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), a non-partisan federation of national medical organizations in 64 countries, representing tens of thousands of doctors, medical students, other health workers, and concerned citizens, claiming to share the common goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation, has warned that “an unprecedented global catastrophe” awaits the globe against the backdrop of warmongering in India and Pakistan.